Community Living

SHEKEL's Living in the Community program is Israel's largest independent community living program for people with special needs. Living in the Community operates a variety of protected-living solutions with 80 independent living frameworks for 300 people from different sectors of the population (religious and secular, Jews and Arabs), with different needs and various levels of functioning.

The apartments are well-groomed and located in the center of Jerusalem's neighborhoods, as well as in Arab sectors and kibbutzim. SHEKEL emphasizes connecting with the general community, the neighbors and the surroundings. The apartments are home to the tenants, and are designed as a warm, pleasant place for them, providing a high quality of life, and individual space for each resident. Most of the apartments are group apartments, and there are also apartments for couples and individuals.

SHEKEL's Living in the Community program actualizes SHEKEL's vision, and is based on a solid ideology of community inclusion, while promising quality of life for its tenants. It seeks to provide not only protected living for people with special needs, but also to provide a warm home and afford them optimal conditions for individual development in every area of life. The program looks to adjust its services to every individual tenant. The tenants' parents are full participants in the tenants' individualized treatment program, and are part of the SHEKEL family.

Living in the Community employs a wide professional staff, including social workers, educators, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, dieticians, and speech therapists. In total, about 300 employees and 50 volunteers from Israel and abroad are employed in the program.

The program's target population is:

people with intellectual and developmental disabilities

people with complex learning disabilities, with borderline intellectual abilities accompanied with an additional syndrome

people with a physical disability (bound to wheelchairs or disabled in their movement), with an additional syndrome

people with Asperger's Syndrome

Contact:

Ofer Dahari, Executive Vice Director of SHEKEL and Director of Living in the Community